Three talks and a round table discussion will take us on a journey through some of those events, people and collectives, spaces and activities that in the last four decades did not get to rise above the cultural surface of our city. Active people and collectives that have stayed off the radar of the majority (as well as the minority in many cases) but have always been part of the cultural fabric of the city, although not in the foreground, and often in the most unorthodox form. We will talk about how they were created, what and how they have been inspired by starting from the time before the Internet until today, and we will debate how their experience has been in a hostile cultural habitat, as is the city of Barcelona.

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Part One: Sonic ruptures of the extinct Barcelona

with Javier Hernando, Jaime Gonzalo

Using the recent publication of the book La Ciudad Secreta by Jaime Gonzalo and the chapters written by Javier Hernando forAlter Musiques Natives in 1995 as a starting point, the writers will dig up the unusual discoveries of their searches and experiences in a transgressive music scene dissenting from officially recognized culture, an internal exile in the already practically extinct pre-Olympic Barcelona.

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Part Two: In the cracks of the apocryphal Barcelona

with Daniel Sedcontra

Avoiding easy mythification, Daniel Sedcontra traces his own critical cartography of the other Barcelona music scene. Inseparably linked to his industrial project Oscar Abril Ascaso + Sedcontra from the early 90s, it moves mainly between the scene created by the collective and record label G3G, his experience in Radio Pica, and bars such as Fistbar! and Marx Bar.

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Part Three: Laptop Dancing: experimentation in the digital era (1994-2014)

with Raül Pratginestós

A journey through the last twenty years of Barcelona’s experimental scene. A period characterized by the appearance of an endless amount of new proposals, tools and languages that have shared time and space with the already established. Rupture and continuity in an era marked by the use and abuse of new technologies.

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Javier Hernando (Barcelona, 1959) began his musical activity in 1979 as a member of the group Xeerox whose recordings have been recovered by the label Anòmia. He is an electronic musician with releases on labels such as Geometrik, Alku, Con-v and Nostalgie de la Boue. In the early 80s he cofounded the label Ortega y Cassette, coinciding with the production of the program Los Silencios de la Radio on Radio Pica.

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Jaime Gonzalo (Bilbao, 1957) is more than four decades into a career in musical journalism, published in magazines such asDisco Expres, Star, Popular 1 Vibraciones and Ruta 66, of which he was cofounder. Currently he collaborates withRockdelux and El Mundo. In addition to La Ciudad Secreta, he is also the author of books such as La Banda Trapera Del Rio: Escupidos de la boca de Dios, Combustión espontánea (about the Stooges) and the trilogy Poder Freak, an account of counterculture.

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Daniel Sedcontrais a writer and musician with a degree in philosophy from the University of Barcelona. In his various published articles (El imagógrafo, La muerte del arte, Ultrafotografía and La desalfabetización) he critically deconstructs aspects of contemporary society from a school of thought heir to French post-Nietzscheanism. His interest in noise and industrial music is evident in articles such as La música industrial y el mal. Since 1990 he has been part of the underground Barcelona music scene as a member of the noise duo Oscar Abril Ascaso + Sedcontra, which a decade later evolved into a project that insidiously combined the lightness of the French chanson with literal extracts of 20th century French philosophy. In 2011 he founded Por qué Jeanette, a musical project of deconstruction in the severe key of the repertory of the singer Jeanette.

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Raül G. Pratginestós (Barcelona, 1972) is known both as a DJ (under the name ZERO) and as a tireless record collector. Obsessed with vinyl as object since childhood, he has spent the better part of his life acquiring, accumulating, listening to, collecting, selling, DJing, talking and writing about records of the most diverse styles, periods and origins. As a DJ he was a founding member of the group 7 Notas 7 Colores and one of the key figures of the electronic boom in post-Olympic Barcelona, initiating a career lasting to this day.